'Fifty Shades' joins list of books banned in US schools and libraries

As America’s annual celebration of the right to read prepares to kick off, erotic novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ has joined the list of books including ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ that have been challenged in US libraries and schools.

Sydney: As America’s annual celebration of the right to read prepares to kick off, erotic novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ has joined the list of books including ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ that have been challenged in US libraries and schools.

Banned Books Week, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, will be marked with displays of banned books in thousands of American libraries and bookshops, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

There will be a “virtual read-out”, where readers and authors will be naming their favourite-censored titles, a “50 Shades of Banned” reading of erotic literature in Manhattan, courtesy of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.

The American Library Association has named a series of titles that have been challenged or censored over the past 30 years, from classics such as ‘Catcher in the Rye’ to the more recent ‘Harry Potter’ series.

One author, Corey Michael Dalton, is taking his celebration of banned literature to the extreme, and will be spending the week in a window of Indianapolis’s Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.

“It’s about bringing attention to Banned Books Week, which has been observed [in] the last week of September every year since 1982,” he told the library.

“Many people are surprised to learn that books are still actively being challenged and/or banned in the US, but it’s true. In 2011, for example, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Brave New World,’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy were all in the list of top 10 most challenged books,” he said.

The American Library Association got 326 reports of attempts to remove books from shelves last year.